A global study has highlighted market demand for simulation and training to combat phishing attacks.

The research, commissioned by Barracuda Networks, revealed several points highlighting the need for organisations to include simulation and training as part of their email security posture.

It includes responses from over 630 participants who all had a responsibility for email security in their organisations. Some of the key findings include:

• 98 percent of respondents said their organization would benefit from additional email security capabilities with phishing simulation (63%), social engineering detection (62%), email encryption (60%), and data loss prevention (59%) leading the way in terms of capabilities valued.
• 100% of the respondents have good intentions and believe that user training is important; however, only 77% are actually training their employees.
• It was also reported that larger organisations (over 1000 employees) are more likely to train their employees.
• Poor employee behaviour (84%) is a greater email security concern than inadequate tools (16%); however, there’s no consensus on the level of employee that will fall for an attack.

Accordingly, Barracuda has expanded its PhishLine product portfolio with a streamlined edition well-suited for organizations with less than 1,000 employees, tuned specifically to be ready for distribution through the reseller channel.

It claims PhishLine can prevent email fraud, data loss, and brand damage by training and testing employees to recognize highly targeted phishing attacks.

“As phishing attacks have become increasingly stealthy and targeted, our adversaries have shifted their focus from the largest organizations to smaller targets,” said Hatem Naguib, SVP and GM of Security at Barracuda. “Today’s announcement expands our PhishLine portfolio, by building on our enterprise grade offering with a solution aimed specifically at simplicity and fast time to value, fit for today’s resource-constrained midsized businesses.”